


The only soul I have I stole from you

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Category: Kings (TV 2009)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Series, Reconciliation, Sex Talk, piano playing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 03:47:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2798444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We take lovers into our souls like we take water into our throats, Jack thought, we drink in their kisses and breathe their breath. We fall in love and we’re unmade. “Have a little faith,” David said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The only soul I have I stole from you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SorchaR](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SorchaR/gifts).



Jack Benjamin shivered in the draft as his fingers glided over the piano keys. The church’s cavernous, dreary meeting room wasn’t exactly a recital hall, and the battered old upright he played wasn’t much of a piano, but he was glad of being here all the same. Infinitely preferable to the plush surroundings of his bedroom prison in the palace of Gilboa’s king. He preferred to think of his father that way now, more of a distant figurehead than a blood relation.

He took a sip of his drink. The whiskey was cheap stuff that tasted as if it had been poured through a petroleum-soaked rag, but it got the job done.

Even through his mild buzz he sensed a change in the air, energy, motion, a prickly sensation Jack couldn’t define but recognized in his blood. _David_ , Jack thought, only David could make the air change just by standing at the edge of a room, the fucker. Jack hadn’t seen him much since they’d arrived at this church. With all the trouble David had gone through to get Jack out of Gilboa, he’d assumed they’d have spent more time together. But leading a revolt against a poisonous snake of a king did tend to keep one busy. Jack found David’s absence made him...lonely, perhaps, was the word. He’d grown accustomed to his presence, the way you grow accustomed to a stray dog that hangs around until one day it’s not there anymore and you recognize the space it took up in your life. 

He glanced in David’s direction. David wore the same clothes he almost always wore, except when he met with Premier Shaw: the brown Henley shirt and olive-drab cargo pants, soldier’s boots, nearly the same thing he’d worn when he’d rescued Jack in a tent a lifetime ago. But David was harder now, more muscular, and there was a set to his jaw that hadn’t been there before he’d left Gilboa, a flintiness to his eyes. And as always, he was dazzling. Even at his most resentful back before the end, Jack had recognized David as an impossible thing: lightning captured in a bottle, snow in the Sahara. A crown of butterflies.

Jack was halfway through the piece he was playing, trying to recall the final part because he’d not played it in years, and faltered when he couldn’t. David chose that moment to sit next to him on the bench, his forearm brushing against Jack’s, calf and knee pressing to calf and knee. Jack swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, the faint _whoosh_ of blood rushing in his ears. Jack stared down at the keyboard.

“I didn’t know you played,” David said, sounding impressed. 

“Oh, I was a good little prince,” Jack responded, “attentive to all the royal arts. Piano lessons from the time I was old enough to reach the keys from the bench. Though my instructor said I didn’t have the gift of it--I was good, but not _talented_. And surely you knew that Michelle played the cello. Beautifully, of course, as she does everything.”

“This needs tuning,” David said, and put his right hand at middle C to encourage Jack to finish the piece. 

Jack played a few more sections, watching David’s hand for guidance, until he’d finished. He kept his fingers on the keys, uncertain what to do with them while David was so close. A lifetime of people’s hands all over him, of the princely liberty of pawing at whomever he wished in any way he wished, and Jack was suddenly shy around this country bumpkin. It beggared belief.

They really should have been working on plans and strategies, not diverting themselves with this. That was when Jack saw David most often these days, the two of them hunched over a table littered with notes and maps. They shared the former pastor’s bedroom, David insisting Jack take the bed while he slept on a cot. When David was here, he was almost always asleep by the time Jack came in. It was difficult for Jack to stay inside a room anymore, especially at night, his mind and body alive with ideas and stories. He’d sit out on the low stone fence and stare up at the open sky, its net of stars cast wide above him, the quiet so unlike that of his palace prison.

David toyed idly with the keys, his rough hands so incongruous there--but how beautifully he played, Jack knew, as if born to it. Why shouldn’t he be, since he was born to everything else? Jack squeezed his eyes shut against the bitterness that threatened even still to erupt inside him. We are deformed by these things we think we want, by desires and need. He shook himself out of it, glanced sideways at David. 

“I only know one duet for four hands,” Jack said. “Schubert’s Fantasy in F Minor. And I only remember the first few pages. There’s little but hymns in the bench, I looked.”

“I know it. I played four-handed pieces with my father often.” His voice was warm and fond, no doubt pleased that Jack had brought it up.

Jack had no idea why he was suddenly talking about playing together, why he was talking at all. “Really, I’ve forgotten almost all of it. And I only know the primo.” 

“It’s a complex piece. We’ll try as much as you know,” David said softly, and tucked his hip up against Jack’s, his right arm tight against Jack’s left. There came that once-familiar frisson of excitement in his lower belly, so long absent, and always so peculiar when it was David, his sister’s beloved, his sister’s _straight_ beloved.

They began playing, Jack slightly slower at first, trying to find the notes. David would slow accordingly, then guide him with his playing as they found the flow together. Astonishing, how much he recalled, or maybe it was just David’s gift that gave him back the melody. The tingling in his belly increased as they played; he could feel David’s breath near his cheek, smell his skin, warm and earthy. 

“Michelle will be here in a few days,” David said conversationally. Jack abruptly pressed his hands down on the keys, the discordant sound making David wince. He stopped and stared at Jack, brow creased. “I’d hoped it would be enough time for you to prepare yourself. You don’t have to see her if you don’t want to, though.”

Jack scoffed and rolled his eyes. “I think the issue will be more about her seeing me. Since the last time she spoke to me I’d just given someone the nod to murder a minister and she was facing down the same gun.” He knew David wanted her here with them, hoped for their reconciliation. They’d be a happy little family again, the history of their betrayals festering under the smiles. Just like old times. 

“It’s been said many times now that she’s forgiven you. That she still loves you. Will you ever believe it?” he asked, voice strained.

Jack ran his fingers back and forth across the ebony keys, shiny with the wear of so many fingers over so many years, when people used this as a church and not the base camp of a rebel army. “Possibly not.”

“Because you don’t believe you’re worthy of forgiveness.” David put his right hand on top of Jack’s left, squeezing hard. “Jack, talk to me. You haven’t talked to me, not really, since you got here. If we’re to make this work, if we’re really to return to Gilboa and heal the kingdom, you have to talk to me. You have to--”

“Be your pal? Your best bud?” he said, his voice dripping with scorn, and David flinched. _Still a prick, Jack, you’re a fucking hopeless prick._ He shook his head. “I’m sorry, David. You’ve only ever tried to do right by me and look how I repay you. You and Janet and Stuart, and everything you did for me.” David’s blue eyes searched Jack’s face for something, but he had no idea what. Well, what had David ever sought from him?

He hadn’t asked to be rescued. After taking out his rage on Lucinda for weeks, he’d leveled out into a calm acceptance. It was what he’d deserved, just as Ephram had said, and he couldn’t wash the stain away. 

Lucinda had loved him, despite what a prick he was. Despite the knowledge of what he was and she could never have, and he may have been a lot of terrible things, but he wasn’t stupid enough to throw that away. When the whisperings about his disappearance had crescendoed into shouts, his parents had been forced into the public spectacle of a wedding. The broadcast was awe-inspiring, really, with insert shots of Michelle from her last public appearance, made to look dewy-eyed and joyous at her twin’s good fortune, his mother’s demure tears a perfect counterpoint. Poor Lulu, stuck with him all those months, then paraded around as a brood mare in a couture wedding gown.

He’d made his peace with her, though, and loved her in his fashion. Giving her her freedom had been more important to him than securing his own. If he’d died the night Stu had spirited him away, he would have been content with that, as long as Lulu was all right. 

David took his hands, put them back on the keyboard, and elbowed him to prompt him to play. Fine, he thought, have it your way, you always do. They played the same section over again until Jack faltered on the notes, and David laughed and tried to show him what to do, touching him perhaps a bit longer than necessary. In his past life he’d have been certain David was flirting with him. But fucking a prince would be nothing to David even if he wasn’t straight as an arrow; he’d already fucked a princess and sired a daughter with her, proving she wasn’t doomed to childlessness after all by the strength of his God-endorsed cock. Because God wanted David to be king, and God wanted David to have children, and God wanted...what? For Jack to overcome his jealousy and love David too, proving he was beloved of everyone on the freaking planet? 

It wouldn’t be the first time Jack had encountered such a thing--one look at the Internet told you how common the fantasy of making it with both the royal twins was, and he’d heard it more than once from people he’d fucked, though most of those hopes had been dashed upon the rocks of Michelle’s vow. Jack had once told Michelle he wanted a T-shirt of a comment he’d seen, some guy saying that when he was done with the princess he’d want a blow-job from Jack, because the prince looked like a champion cocksucker. Why shouldn’t David be prey to those desires, too? He was, as he’d always said, not a saint, and apparently everyone recognized Jack’s potential as a cocksucking champ.

Jack stared down at their hands, David’s wrist resting next to Jack’s. “What do you want, David? Why are you doing this?” So this was the new Jonathan Benjamin: the one who looked a gift fuck in the mouth. 

“I have always only wanted the friendship and love of my prince,” David said, smiling with that inscrutable, calm face. 

“Did your mother drop you on your head quite a bit as a baby?” He shook his head. “I’m not your prince anymore. I’m...nothing. Less than nothing.”

David’s eyes darkened. “Yes, because so many people in Gilboa are begging for the return of their nothing.”

“Misguided people who’ve romanticized my disappearance. If they knew the truth of it, and of my alliance with my uncle, they’d be begging for my head instead.”

David rubbed his forehead and eyes, a slope in his shoulders. “I’ve told you. We can’t succeed in this, Jack, not without you. You were a superb soldier--your men loved you, respected you for the commander you were. And people were enraptured by you, despite the bad-boy act, maybe because of it. Even your father knew that your reputation was only growing before the coup, and look how he spun your disappearance once he’d locked you away like some kind of breeding stallion.”

Jack laughed out loud, the first real laugh he could remember in months. “Do you really think I’m a stallion?” He smiled and arched an eyebrow, and was delighted when David blushed. “Too bad for Silas I was a bent one. There ends the dynasty.” He stared at the far wall. “He used to dangle the promise of making ours a blood dynasty in front of me like a carrot, so I would forget my ‘mistake of character’ and give him heirs. And I was the perfect ass who chased the carrot until he turned it into a stick.” 

The stories the king told the press after he’d locked Jack away had grown increasingly laughable, attempts made first to trade on the goodwill Jack had engendered by getting shot but inevitably sinking into the fabulist, that Jack had been a prisoner of William Cross’s and participated in the coup only by force and was recovering from the ordeal. Thanks to David’s work behind the scenes they were bound now in the people’s minds, David Shepherd and Jonathan Benjamin, the ones who could soothe Gilboa’s troubled soul and lead the kingdom into the future. 

“I hate that your father called you those names. His bigotry is vile. That’s not the way most people think anymore.” 

“But no one’s ready for a king who fucks men, are they?” he spat out. You couldn’t have power and be victim to those urges, not as king, Silas had said, the words still shrapnel in his heart. What did it say about his parents that they would have preferred to raise a spoiled, womanizing, venal liar than an honest, good, brave homosexual? And how could he have thought he loved them?

David opened his mouth, his cheeks flushed red, but then he seemed to reconsider whatever argument he wanted to present. Wisely so, Jack thought. They sat in silence for a while. David played something Jack had never heard before, and Jack said, “I don’t know what you want from me, David. And until the past year or so, I’ve always recognized what people wanted from me.”

“We didn’t have the chance to accomplish the things you hoped for when you were going to take the throne. Now we can. Must people always have ulterior motives? I’ve been honest with you since you came here.”

“To your little refuge.” He laughed over that, the idea of David, Silas’s greatest threat, hiding in a cave--an actual cave!--eating beans out of a can and trying to decide what to do. For months. 

“And now we have a roof over our heads and food and a place from which to organize.”

Jack looked around the room. “Not exactly palatial, is it? I wonder how it compares to where Michelle was exiled.” She, at least, had had some staff, could leave her rooms. It hadn’t taken them long to find David at all with such freedoms. 

“You’re a snob even still, Jack Benjamin.” David grinned.

“I’m not a snob. I’m just discerning.” He smiled in return.

“I’d have thought being trapped in a room for so long would have made you more grateful for the simpler joys in life.”

“Well, I’m nothing if not a contrarian.” He smiled. “I can’t remember a time when everything wasn’t handed to me on an actual silver platter, until I went to the royal military academy. And even then I had to fight with them not to give me special privileges, or to make life at the front easy or plush. Whatever my men got, I got.” He could be merely a soldier then, not a prince, and he’d loved it. Loved the camaraderie of his men, the way they treated him solely as their lieutenant or captain and judged him on his deeds. Loved fighting alongside them in the muck and the noise and the stench. 

“And you question why your men loved you.”

He stared down at his hands, no rings anymore on his fingers or bracelets on his wrists that cost as much as a car. “I think that was the only time I ever felt that. Felt like anyone respected me, liked me, for what I was inside, rather than what they hoped to get from me. The only thing they expected or wanted was to be led, to be listened to and respected in turn.” He paused. “You saved my life. Twice.”

“And you saved mine, twice.”

“Well, that’s us then, at an impasse in the life-saving competition.” He paused. “Though I suppose you getting me out of that palace could be counted as another life-saving.”

David was quiet for a while. “I knew how low you were. I had to do something.” Even Jack’s suicide attempts were half-hearted by that point, but Stu--who’d managed to get himself on Jack’s security guard--had told someone in their network, who told Janet Samuels, and she’d eventually told it to David. That there’d even been a cadre of people working behind the scenes for Jack and his sister’s benefit had stunned him. He’d never imagined himself as the sort of person who’d inspire such bravery. And David was always there for them, with his natural courage.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” David said.

“Why do you need to know that? All you really need from me is my support. Not my heart, not my soul. Just my skills and my knowledge of Gilboan politics.”

“And do you give those freely? You’ve never even said that much in all this time.” 

“Of course I do.” At the very least, Jack owed Ephram that. For telling him the truth, even when it hurt Jack, that God wanted another on the throne of Gilboa, for telling him as well the truth of his father. “Did you know that you rescued me from a situation my own father created? The first time, I mean, your great battlefield theatrics.” He began playing, more Schubert because he really liked Schubert, simply to avoid looking at David’s face.

David squinted, confused. “Silas...Silas had you ambushed? To what purpose?”

“He and Abner had my air support withdrawn. My overwatch. Left us there. The king insisted he didn’t expect me to be there, but I don’t see how that could be true. My father was a soldier, he knew how these things operate, where my unit was. Ephram--Reverend Samuels--wrote me a letter before he was murdered, and told me everything, that my father made quite a show of his grief when he said they wouldn’t negotiate for hostages, but that he was nevertheless content to sacrifice me on the altar of war. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Ephram, that while the scales had fallen from his eyes over what Silas had become, he could no longer look away and their friendship crumbled. They tried to repair it, but...” David’s presence had sealed that fate.

“He loved you.” David said it as though such love was a simple truth, that once someone loved you, it never left, it never shriveled up and blew away. Maybe in his world, it didn’t.

“Once. I was ‘a happy child, full of light and love,’ Ephram said in that letter. Before I’d been poisoned, before I’d been corrupted and begun to believe I needed power. Or was owed it by birthright. And I think...I was, really, I remember being happy, laughing all the time, sharing a childhood with Michelle before she got sick, and thinking of all the things I could grow up to be, maybe an astronaut or a pilot or something glamorous but useful.” 

But he couldn’t remember the time when he’d believed in God, knew he must have because God was as much a part of his life as the crown and the butterflies. It had pained Ephram so much to know he’d lost his belief. 

He thought of his father telling him to numb it with ice, that we give up what we want when we want power, the fucking hypocrite. If nothing else kept him here with David it would be the possibility of rubbing his father’s face in it, of knowing the king would never have what he wanted--power or his beloved second family--in this life again. But that bitterness was exactly what had troubled Ephram so.

 _As despicable an act as Silas made, I understand it now to be a path God made to bring David to you, and you to him. I believe you are destined for greater things together, He has told me this. Let God back into your heart, Jonathan. Let him show you that path._

“Ephram came to my graduation from the academy when my own father couldn’t be bothered. He gave the eulogy for the only person I’ve ever loved. When he spoke about love, he looked right at me, trying to convince me, I knew, that I was worthy of love as well. And I let him down at the end, the way I let everyone down, always.”

“He was a good man. I cared for him, and I’ve come to care very much for Janet as I’ve gotten to know her. The way she turned her grief into action.” David put his hand on Jack’s knee, and Jack sat up, rigid. “Tell me about him. The one you loved so much. I’d like to know.”

With his index finger, Jack swiped at the dust on top of the piano, swallowing around the lump in his throat. His eyes burned with tears he absolutely did not want David to see, so he turned his head away, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth.

“His name was Joseph, and I treated him terribly for the promise of a crown. He was the only person who ever saw me for what I really was, saw through the fantasy of my life and didn’t care about the ugly reality of me.” Until you, Jack thought, and his chest seized with the realization of it. “And he killed himself because I hurt him so badly. He said I was too brave to be such a coward. He was right.”

“Not a coward,” David said, “just misguided. Who doesn’t make mistakes?”

“You, apparently.” 

David smiled and ducked his head. “The important thing is to learn from them. And that’s the hardest thing, isn’t it? Why do we always have to learn things the hard way? Why can’t we just, I don’t know, have someone tell us something and we listen and think, okay, that’s great advice, and then we avoid the whole terrible experience of the hard way?” 

Jack finished the drink he’d been neglecting. He didn’t want to talk about these things anymore, he was done with talking in general. He could smell something cooking in the rectory and was aware he hadn’t eaten since yesterday, so he pulled the cover down over the keyboard and stood. David eyed the glass grievously. If Jack was going to live in exile stripped of his privilege, he wanted to keep a few small vices. 

But as he stood, David reached out and took his wrist, pulling him back down on the bench. Jack sat facing the opposite direction, his shoulder pressed against David’s. 

“You told me something important to you about someone you loved. Now I need to tell you the same. Michelle and I spoke vows that night I left Gilboa, and Reverend Samuels came to us, in a vision I learned later, and told us we were married in the eyes of God.” He closed his eyes for a moment, lost in some private world. “But things change over time. People change. She didn’t tell me about her pregnancy that night, for reasons I didn’t understand until very recently. I was happy, very happy, about our child, but I realized when we saw each other again we’d changed so much. Our feelings had changed. What we wanted from the future. I think passion flares out and then settles into something quieter, you know?”

Jack gave a brittle laugh. He’d never had the chance to learn any such thing, having to hide everything he felt. He wrenched his wrist away from David’s hand, staring at him in disbelief. “Are you saying you don’t love her anymore?” he asked, his voice weaker than he wished it.

“No, I do. Just not in the way I once did, and she’s...she’s renewed her vow to dedicate herself to doing good works for others, not for her own happiness. She believes that by breaking her vow, she led us down this terrible path, somehow. I can’t convince her any different. She’s harder on herself than anyone else could be. But that’s what led her back to me, to this idea of taking back Gilboa--she wants to dedicate herself to a greater good for our child, for our families, and we’ve come to an understanding.”

“That ridiculous vow. I pressed it out of her, when she would have me never know for the fool I’d make her out to be. And I tried to understand, I did, but it was galling that neither of us could be happy and be who we were, and she by _choice_.” It was the last confession she’d ever shared with him. Jack added with a fury that surprised him, “She loves you. That’s the vow she should be honoring.”

“I’ve come to kind of admire her for it, in a way. She won’t break it.”

Jack scoffed. “We are none of us in this family above breaking our vows. As you’ve seen.” He thought about all the promises to God that the king had made in his lifetime, how easily his covenants were cast aside. All the things he’d done to maintain power. 

“It wasn’t such a bad trade-off for either of us--I have a beautiful child and we have a true friendship. And we can have more children, that’s not impossible. I’ve had to give up a lot of things, but as long as she’s here with me, with us...that’s enough.”

There was a sad, bitter edge to David’s voice, his statement’s gravity cutting through air around them. “It hurts you.” So many times he’d wanted to hurt David, and now he ached to undo everything that caused him pain.

“Sometimes. I hate this side of myself, but I’ve learned some things as well. About how I’ve changed and how that reflects what I want.” Jack shifted his head slightly, eye to eye with David now. His blue eyes blazed like a summer sky, heat in them that Jack had never seen before. Jack swallowed. So that was it, then.

“We’re not interchangeable, you know. We’re fraternal twins, it’s not as if we can play practical jokes on others by pretending to be one another, swap partners. Don’t confuse being curious with attraction. She’s all the good things I’m not. What you loved in her...doesn’t exist in me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” David touched the side of Jack’s face with affection, although hesitantly. Jack could see the fear in his eyes, but the fire, too. “What I love in her I see in you, too. You’ve just forgotten all those things you so resembled in each other. And I’ve seen the person you’ve become, rebuilding yourself brick by brick.”

The urge to slap David came back, and Jack shook as everything inside him tried to control it. “I need to leave now,” Jack muttered, shoving the bench back as he stood.

Of all the things Jack had expected from David, an errant desire to screw him because he couldn’t screw his sister was fairly far down on the list. Jack knew when someone wanted him, he’d had to learn that skill as soon as he’d understood his sexuality and what that meant for a crown prince. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about David, of course he had, but that was a long time ago in another country, before David and Michelle had conceived a child together. David couldn’t have brought him here for this. 

He loved his sister, he did, but he couldn’t comprehend why she thought God gave the first shit about her ridiculous vow. She could do good works, be the person He’d let her live to become, without denying herself the very man she loved. 

Of all Jack’s miserable regrets, the worst was snapping that last thread connecting him to Michelle, sealing their estrangement with a gun pointed at her chest. She was the person he’d been born with, one half of a whole. They’d shared everything; Michelle had known he was gay at almost the same time Jack had fully realized it. The first time she was ill, he’d rushed to be with her the instant lessons were over, even slept in her hospital room next to her. He’d always believed until that terrible day that he could go back to her, push their jagged halves together, but he’d condemned himself to be alone.

If he’d considered the loss of his princely life a missing limb, the loss of his twin was bleeding himself out, cutting every artery till there was nothing left inside. A gnawing, aching emptiness, insides hollowed, his soul torn away. The eyes that had once looked at him with love and understanding had stared at him with hatred and incomprehension. He’d lost his lifeline that day, not just the promise of a crown. 

A laugh rose up inside him, bubbling out of his lungs, and Jack couldn’t stop it. David had rescued Jack and was convinced he wanted a relationship with him, and Michelle was nobly giving up the one thing she wanted most in the world to rise up against the king. It was his father’s worst nightmare, and it was hilarious, and he couldn’t have made it up if he’d tried. 

 

Jack stood on the edge of the cliff overlooking the river. A dizzying view, hanging this far out, looking down however many hundreds of feet. The late spring wind whipped past him, not warm enough to stand here in shirtsleeves like he was, drinking from a bottle of really bad whiskey.

“Do you _want_ to kill yourself?” David asked from behind him, surprising Jack enough that he wobbled at the cliff’s edge. 

Jack squinted into the overbright sky. “Define ‘want.’”

David grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him, stumbling, backwards. “Jack, these cliffs are part limestone. Outcroppings could crumble underneath you before you know it.” David’s dog ran after some gulls, barking and leaping.

He lost his footing as David released him and sat down hard on the ground. Whiskey had sloshed onto his hand, so he licked it off his skin, glancing up at David, whose face was a study of desire. _Oh, that again._

“Are you drunk?” David asked, sitting next to him. 

“Working on it.”

“Maybe you should stop.” Jack wasn’t certain if he meant stop right now or forever, but he chose not to ask. 

“Sorry, Mom.”

David snorted. “You mother terrified me,” he said, squinting up at the sun. His profile really was lovely, especially when he closed his eyes. How the king must have quailed to see that profile raised toward heaven, crowned in butterflies.

“She terrified me too. But your mom is even scarier, if you ask me. Reminiscent of one of those oracles of old. Seems to know everything that will happen before it happens.”

“Yeah, that always annoyed the hell out of me when I was a kid. Still. Useful when you’re planning a rebellion.”

“True.” He offered the bottle to David, who eyed him skeptically but then accepted it and drank. “The thing I fear most is more of my family dying. I don’t think she can take it, and I know she’s never wanted this for me. I think of all that I nearly lost, too, with you being imprisoned and Michelle being punished because of me...if God wants me to do this, it’s one thing. But it’s another for everyone else to suffer along the way. I can’t believe He wants that, but...”

Now that the sun was warming him a bit and he was out of the wind, Jack lay back on the ground and stared up at the sky. “When God speaks to you, what’s it like? Do you see things up there?” Jack asked, pointing at the clouds. “Or is stuff arranged into messages, like, I don’t know, words appearing on a piece of toast?”

“I don’t know. To be honest, I’ve never really felt like God was talking to me. It’s more like I see patterns in my mind’s eye, steps I should take. I never even thought about it at all until Reverend Samuels and your father insisted that those feelings I had were God speaking to me. It’d be great if He was clearer. If He just sort of appeared and said in precise language what I needed to hear. I _hate_ the vagueness.” They both laughed.

“Signs and portents and God in His infinite obscurity. I’m so sick of it I could puke.”

David lay back, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Didn’t you hear Him speak to you when you wanted to become king?”

“No. Not a whisper. That’s all right. I’ve never been fond of ceremonies.” _You are not the one He wants._ Ephram’s words still burned inside Jack sometimes, like white phosphorous searing away his desires. “You don’t really want what God wants for you, though, do you?” Jack asked gently, realizing it for the first time. “That’s why you want me here with you. And Michelle.”

“Only partly. The truth is, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t even really know that I want to do this, but I feel I have to. That I’ve been led to it. And everyone who’s sacrificed along the way--their sacrifice has to mean something. But I also wanted you here because you’re my friend. The hardest thing for me to do was ally myself with your father again, but your uncle was too dangerous. If it had just been us...” 

Jack turned his face toward David. He looked like the paintings in Shiloh’s museums, an angel and a warrior. “I know. I’ve had so much time to flog myself over my decisions. But I was a coward.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that you weren’t a coward?” David said, sighing. “Too ambitious, maybe, too bitter. But your father did wrong by you. He taught you all the wrong lessons. And I know what he did to you. Your actions started to make sense after I found out, like when you beat up that guy in the club.” He sighed. "Stop punishing yourself. You deserve to have nice things, Jack."

They were silent for a time, listening to the wind in the canyon, the birds in the distance. “When did you first know?” Jack asked. “That I was...gay.” The word felt strange in his mouth, astringent, and he could hardly say it out loud; he never had before. But curiosity bloomed hot inside him.

“Michelle told me at some point after I first saw her in exile. I think when I told her about your father’s mistress and Seth.” Regret colored David’s voice, and he glanced away, his lips in a tight line. He couldn’t forgive himself for keeping the king’s secret, even while he forgave Jack all his sins. “And I thought how stupid I was that I never saw you for who you were, because I...could have...”

Jack leaned up on his elbow, tilted his head. “Could have what?” His mind ran through all the squalid things those words offered: take blackmail pictures, out him in public, maybe threaten him into sucking his cock. 

“That night. First night. I watched that girl go upstairs with you and I wondered what it would be like to go up there instead.” He turned his head and challenged Jack to make a cruel riposte, but Jack found his mouth too dry to speak.

All along, David had insisted he wasn’t a saint. But Jack hadn’t listened, his conviction of David as a simpleton too convenient to hold on to. 

“Was that the first time?” Jack asked, his breath stretching deep through his chest. 

David shook his head. “The first time I really paid attention to you--I saw you and Michelle on TV. You were both so gorgeous and exotic and dazzling, and like anyone that age, I had a crush on you. Both of you, but that was the first time I’d realized a boy could feel that way about another boy.”

Jack’s heart hammered inside his ribcage. “A crush on me?” The hundreds of times he’d heard that, and yet this was the first time it had mattered. 

“I fantasized about meeting Michelle, in that abstract way you do about someone you know you’ll never meet, but you...I fantasized about other things. Later I met a boy who wanted to do those things.” David had the strangest look, nothing like the way other men--or women--had looked at him when they told him they wanted him. It reminded him of Lucinda, admitting that she was willing to take whatever crumbs he gave her. Someone opening themselves to him, as if they didn’t know he would take and take and never give back until they were hollow inside. 

“I had no idea you had it in you,” Jack said, raising his brows, leaning in.

“How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not an innocent. That I’m no saint. Unsophisticated, maybe a little naive, but not that way.”

He grinned. “You couldn’t help yourself. It’s been said I have the look of a champion cocksucker.” 

The smile slipped from David’s face. “Don’t.”

Jack stared down at the ground, swirling the bottle around and around in his hand. He was in freefall, suddenly, as if he’d really taken a dive off that cliff and hurled himself down to the rocks below, weightless.

Jack wanted to tell David that he’d never had a friend before, not a true friend who wanted nothing from him except his presence and his love. That he hadn’t even known people like David could exist in this world, people who found beauty in things like a simple melody played on an out-of-tune piano or playing fetch with their dog. Who could look up at the sky and hear the voice of God and find comfort in it rather than a will to power. He wanted to reach over and brush his fingers along David’s cheek, rest his head against David’s shoulder and feel the peace that seemed to radiate from him. He wanted to thank him again for saving his life, and bringing him here, and opening himself to him. For seeing that Jack could be better, that he was more than his fears and shadows. 

All he could say was, “You have no idea what it’s like to live your life in shadow. Hiding who I was, being obscured by my father’s ambitions. I let it turn every corner of my soul dark, until I didn’t have one anymore.” He swallowed. “It was so dark in there that I never knew what it was like to have a friend. Even Joseph, because I denied him that relationship.”

“My brother Eli died at the front. He was my best friend. I told him things I’ve never told anyone else, and that I want to tell you now.” David turned over on his belly and propped himself up on his elbows, playing with the grass. He told Jack then about the Goliath, about what had happened after Jack made it to the lookout. As he spoke, Jack noticed his shoulders relaxing, his brow smoothing out, the set of his jaw loosening. He glanced up at Jack. “I told him I wasn’t brave, like everyone thought. His last words were, ‘Be brave now.’” There were tears in David’s eyes, and Jack reached out to rub them away.

“I was sorry about your brother. I never said.” Jack added quietly, “Joseph tried to out me publicly when he said those words to me, ‘You’re too brave to be such a coward.’ Before he killed himself.”

David wiped at his eyes and sat up, reaching over for Jack’s hand. “Maybe that’s why God wanted me to bring you here. So we could be the friends we were meant to be. So we could both be brave together.” He twined his fingers through Jack’s. “My question remains. Do you really want to die? Because I can’t have you training people and leading with me if you still want to die.”

Jack pondered his future state of mind, if he could promise David anything. “Not anymore. I’m here for good,” he said, trying to sound hopeful. 

David pulled Jack’s hand to his chest, held it there against his heart.

Then David smiled and said, “Janet was making lunch for everyone. I actually came out here to see if you wanted to eat.”

“Sure, yeah,” Jack said, and let David haul him up. His dog came trotting up beside them. 

They sat at the table and Janet rubbed Jack’s shoulder and smiled at him. He remembered all the times Ephram had brought her to palace functions, how uncomfortable she was, but she always had a kind word and gentle touch for him.

Jack knew he wanted something else now, something he’d never seen before, never even imagined. He wanted to be part of something larger than himself, something good and pure and true. Something that was not about survival or winning or holding on to what he had with every muscle in his body; not about power or his father’s definition of how to obtain it.

David was chewing on a piece of bread, watching him, his head tilted to one side. “What is it?”

“Nothing. I’m just...it’s good to be here.” He had no idea how to identify happiness. But maybe this was satisfaction.

“I think I know what you mean,” David said. “I like being here with you. Being...smaller. Personal. Even with Michelle, with my family, it’s now about the greater good, about a bigger idea, and I understand that. Everyone is looking to me for something more. Something I never asked to be. But with you here now I feel like...me again.”

They finished their meal in silence, then helped Janet feed the men and women who made up David’s small army so far, because that was David’s way and it made Jack feel like he was back in the service. Their ranks grew bigger each week, now that people knew where to find them. Which made Jack nervous, as there was no way they could vet each of the volunteers who’d come to help David. Infiltrating their ranks would be Silas’s first tactic. But David was convinced everyone had the purest of motives, so Jack worked behind the scenes to do what he could. Someone had to be pragmatic here. 

They spent the rest of the day working on their plans, poring over maps and histories and timelines. All the things Jack excelled at, all the things David would need to learn if he wanted to lead an army. These were the moments his old ambitions flowed away from him, the jealousy and bitterness and desire for the crown. This was what he needed to be, where he needed to be. Ephram had been given a vision, had somehow known that Jack had a greater purpose now, knit with David’s.

After dinner, when everyone had faded away and it was just the two of them sitting at their table, the golden glow of lamps gilding David’s blond hair, David sat back and looked at him with faraway eyes. “Do you really think we can do this? Sometimes I just don’t know.”

“Believe me, I’d be gone if I didn’t. I’m a pro-level self-server. But it will be hard. There will be more sacrifices.” He rubbed at his face.

“I know. Maybe that’s why I’m having so much trouble with this kind of thing.” David swept a hand over the maps.

“Well, get over it. Because people will bleed and suffer and die. It’s a fact of life in these sorts of things. Deposing Silas may be the easiest part, now that we have Gath’s might behind us. Fortune may smile on us and he’ll choose to fall on his sword and save us the trouble of deciding what to do about him. He’s an old soldier, I wouldn’t put it past him. But he’s clung to his power with a grip so tight he’s strangling himself, and he can’t see anything else. It stopped being about the good of his people and solely about maintaining that power a long time ago. So you’ll have to deal with him in a way that doesn’t make you appear just as bad as he is. And then you’ll have to handle Port Prosperity and the lands to the north, and--”

David’s arm suddenly shot forward and Jack flinched back, caught off guard. David’s fingers cupped the back of Jack’s neck and he drew him forward quickly, bringing his lips to Jack’s in a vertiginous kiss.

That was unexpected. Jack gave a nervous laugh even as he kissed him. David’s lips were ripe and lush, and he kissed with a surety Jack was astonished by. The kiss of someone who knew what he wanted. Hooking his foot around one of the chair legs, David dragged his chair closer as he pressed his lips harder to Jack’s, his tongue slipping inside. Jack wrapped his arms around David, pulling him forward so they were each sitting at the edge of their chair. It had been so long, so long since he’d kissed someone with this much passion. 

He chuckled against David’s mouth. “Is this what God’s telling you to do? Make out with someone who spent an inordinate amount of time making you suffer? I’m surprised at you, Shepherd.”

“Maybe I’m attracted to that bad boy shell hiding a soft, creamy center.” He smiled, stroked his hand across the side of Jack’s face again and again, pressed soft, sweet kisses to Jack’s mouth. His lips and cheeks were the pink of a rose, his eyes the sparkling blue of water in sunlight. Unfair, was all Jack could think, how unfair that this is when he should finally fall.

“And just how far does this experience with boys, bad or otherwise, go?” Jack asked, biting down lightly on his chin.

David’s hands were solid on the blade of his jaw, his thumbs stroking Jack’s cheekbones, and he tasted Jack’s lips again and again as he spoke. “Not very.” He glanced down at the papers that littered the table. “As with other things, I want you to teach me everything you know.” He’d thought David was naive, maybe even stupid at times, but instead David had been studying Jack all this time. Learning who he was and how to reach him. Charting where to find the soul he’d lost along the way. 

Jack began to whisper all the things he could do as he kissed David, the things he would want to do and have done to him, David’s fingers digging into his skin as the words fell against his ear. “I want to feel your cock in my hand, taste you in my mouth. Someone else’s hand on you...it’s a thousand times better than your own, touching you, kissing you as they stroke you. Touching you here,” he said, and rubbed David’s nipple through his shirt. David swallowed hard, breath as deep and speedy as if he’d run uphill, and Jack smiled to see how much he craved this. “We could simply press and move our bodies together--the friction, it’s delicious. Or we might suck each other at the same time.” He ran his tongue along, then inside, David’s ear. “I want you to touch me everywhere. I want to feel you inside me, your fingers, your cock, filling me up.” He palmed David’s erection through his pants, watching him blink with unfocused eyes, pupils blown wide. “Not everyone likes being fucked, but I do. Not everyone enjoys using their tongue on another’s ass, but I do. Only give to me what you’re willing. But you may ask of me whatever you desire.” Jack kissed down along David’s neck and smiled as David quivered under his hands.

Jack’s fingers twisted the worn fabric of David’s shirt, found purchase on his skin as he slid them up his back. He pulled away and blinked, realizing that David had already unbuttoned Jack’s shirt and slid it halfway off, pinning his elbows to his side. They stood and made quick work of undressing, and David’s body unclothed made his mouth water, the blood pulse in his cock. Jack bore David down onto his bed, where he pressed kisses to the valley in the center of his ribcage, the knolls of bone on shoulder and back, hips and wrists. Jack wanted to show David a new city, a new home, and David’s eyes were alight with the discovery of it.

David pulled him to the edge of the bed with hands that possessed him, and took Jack inside his mouth, startlingly confident. The world was narrowed down to this, David’s hot mouth around his shaft, firm wet tongue flicking at the slit, and he couldn’t last, but David drew him out even after he climaxed, mouth working till he was soft inside it and hand caressing his thigh. 

Sliding up beside him, David lay Jack down on his side, pressed his fingers against the opening to Jack’s body, skimmed around the edge slowly, sweetly, as if he’d done this a hundred times before. He curled himself around Jack. “I want to feel myself inside you,” David whispered against the back of Jack’s neck, and Jack shuddered with the need of it. David reached for something in the locker next to his bed, and Jack thought distantly _where did he get that_ and then _he’s been planning this all along_ and he grinned as David slid cool, slick fingers inside him. Jack fumbled with the condom package, his hands shaking in his hunger, then rolled it over David’s cock as David shivered at the touch.

Jack liked to straddle them when they were half-sitting, lean over and kiss them while he rode them, and David obliged him now, smiling, sighing, his fingers clutching Jack’s ass so he could go as deep inside Jack as possible. “My prince,” he said against Jack’s lips, cock pounding hard into him until he exhaled deeply in his climax, quivered, then stilled. “My prince.” Jack laughed and laughed, kissed him dearly, and said against his mouth, “My king.”

 

In the morning Jack woke to David snoring against his neck. He’d learned that God’s anointed snored like a pig rooting around for slop in its pen. Waking next to the body of someone he’d fucked the night away with was rare. Sometimes Stuart would stay as long as he could, but he risked far too much to sleep in Jack’s bed, so he’d played his part as serviceman and slept down on the sofa. Staying at Joseph’s had been impossible. Jack always believed he’d preferred it that way, unencumbered, keeping it about fucking, not a relationship. He’d never had romantic notions like his sister, that wasn’t the life he was capable of leading. Well. How things did change.

Despite David’s snoring, Jack could hear voices outside, people moving about in the courtyard. He turned and smoothed down David’s unruly hair, tracing two fingers along his lips, and David quieted. Whenever the king or Ephram had spoken about God, it was about feeling Him in your soul. But he’d lost acquaintance with his soul, so he’d never thought to hear that voice. Somehow Ephram had known Jack would hear God again, told him in that letter that he had but to listen for it. Jack watched David now, and he knew. He heard it. 

“I’m awake, you know,” David said, groggy and tender.

Jack took his hand away. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be, it’s nice. What time is it?”

He reached for his watch. “Almost ten.” He should feel guilty, sleeping so late, but the night had been...active.

“Michelle will be here soon.”

“Do we--do we talk about this? With her, I mean.” Sitting up, Jack held his hands out, palms open. He needed David to see his helplessness.

“We’ll deal with it as it comes up.” David pulled his shirt over his head and tugged on his pants. So they were separating into themselves, their individual factors. Jack’s disappointment stunned him silent. 

Running his fingers through his hair, Jack said, “It’s strange, sometimes, growing up a twin. Even fraternal twins. You’re a unit, you’re the twins, and you do everything together. Then you get a little older and you start carving out your own identity, start to live the lives you’ll have to live without each other. If you’re a boy like me, you learn you’re queer, and everything that means to the identity you’ve tried to build for yourself. If you’re a girl like Michelle, you get sick and you make a bargain with God. And you realize, at some point, that you’ve separated, the unit broke apart somewhere down the line and you don’t really know when it happened, but all that’s left is this huge, gaping chasm and there’s no bottom to it. There’s just...no bottom.” Tears fell from his eyes, dropped onto his hands. He’d never allowed himself the luxury to say that to anyone. 

David knelt down by the bed and wove his fingers through Jack’s, clutching his hand tightly. “It’s time to mend that.” Jack willed himself to look at David, and saw that there were tears at the edges of his eyes, too. But his voice was firm, resolute. He pressed his forehead to Jack’s, but Jack couldn’t meet his eyes. 

Gathering his clothes, Jack headed to the bathroom next door to take a shower. He reeked of sex and yesterday’s sweat. Before he could reach the door, David stuck his arm out and halted Jack, curling his palm around behind his neck. “She knows how I feel about you, I think. She’s a very keen observer, just like you, and she made a joke about how you used to take all her stuff. But maybe she knows it was something...unobtainable, unformed in my thoughts.” He pulled Jack into a rough, claiming kiss.

We take lovers into our souls like we take water into our throats, Jack thought, we drink in their kisses and breathe their breath. We fall in love and we’re unmade. “Have a little faith,” David said, and smiled against his mouth. 

They went about their usual daily rituals, as if somehow the world hadn’t been tipped on its axis. After lunch, he paced back and forth across the rectory, waiting for the sound of Michelle’s car. It reminded him of waiting with Lucinda, she cutting out pictures for their wedding like a child with paper dolls. He swallowed down the sorrow at her fate, all because of his ambitions. His _needs_. Then he heard the sound of David’s voice, and a car door shutting. Jack put his hands in his pockets as they entered the room, guilt and shame like fire inside his head.

David beamed, his face so illuminated by love it almost knocked Jack sideways. On Michelle, in one of those baby carriers strapped on like a knapsack, was his niece, tiny and rosy and capped with David’s golden hair. David took the baby from her as Jack came forward and reached out for Michelle’s hand. Her face had changed from that of an innocent young woman to a queen, determined, strong, yet soft around the edges with contentment and the knowledge of her power.

For the first time in years and years, he felt it, that shared life and love they’d known before. They could be one again, the twins, she was his and he was hers. She pulled him into an embrace. His heart beat so hard it was choking him. “Oh, Jack,” she said. “We’re here. We’re here together again.”

He kissed the top of her head, and then dropped to his knees in front of her. “I’m so sorry. For everything. You can’t know how sorry I am.”

“Jack. This is your niece,” she said, and knelt down next to him, letting him see the baby. “Julia.” Though she had David’s hair, she had his sister’s beauty, the shape of her eyes and mouth, her tiny nose. 

Julia put her hands to his mouth, little fingers grabbing his lower lip and pulling. He laughed and took one of her hands in his. “Her fingers! They’re so tiny, look at them.” He’d never found babies even the slightest bit interesting, yet she was magical and he was beguiled, kissing those tiny little fingers and poking her nose, which made her giggle. 

“Right now she seems like she’s perfect, but mark my words, in a couple hours when she’s tired, you won’t be thinking that,” Michelle warned. “And she’s teething, and she refuses to sleep, so tonight will be...well, brace yourself.”

“Isn’t that what Mom said about me? That I wouldn’t sleep? She’d find me standing in my crib, rocking back and forth, for hours. I suppose I was just getting in shape for the club scene.”

His niece kept wriggling, trying to touch him, so Michelle handed her to him. The first time he’d ever held a baby, and the top of her head smelled magnificent. “She’s smitten with you. I’ve never seen her be so quiet when someone took her. She screams like a banshee when David holds her.”

The soft breaths that fell across Jack’s neck were silky and made him laugh; he’d always been ticklish there. “Michelle. There are so many things I need to say to you. I don’t know where to start.”

She squeezed his hand and shook her head. “We never learned forgiveness from our parents. So _we_ are the ones who forgive. It’s time to go forward. To heal ourselves so we can heal our country.” 

It would almost make him laugh, the earnestness and the goodness, except that this was why he was here. This was what had led him back to her and to David, and all the rest of it was just a sweet collateral. “All right,” he said, and moved his hands along Julia’s back, so warm and vulnerable and cherished in his arms. 

Kneeling down beside them, David put his arms around both Jack and Michelle, rested his head against Julia’s little shoulder. “I didn’t know until now what God wanted. This is what He was telling me to do. This is why we’re here.” 

 

Jack had taken a break from training with David’s slowly growing army to take Julia off Michelle’s hands. She could accomplish more with one phone call to her Gilboan contacts than the two of them combined with all their personnel, so he was happy to baby-sit. 

They were playing peek-a-boo when David came up behind him, followed by his dog. His fingers trailed softly along the back of Jack’s neck. “I have something,” he said, and pulled some papers out of his pocket. “I found the sheet music for Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor on the Internet.” 

Leaning over, David picked up Julia and she immediately started squalling, which made the dog whine. “She’ll learn to like me someday, do you think?” he asked, cringing. It was repulsively adorable. 

“You hold her like you’re holding livestock, farm boy.” David rocked her back and forth, and Jack adjusted his hands on her. She seemed slightly more satisfied. He looked at the paper in David’s hand and laughed. “We’re in the middle of planning a rebellion and you’re printing out sheet music.”

His grin was guileless, open-hearted, and Jack was powerless in the face of it. “Come play with me,” David said, and swatted Jack’s arm when Jack arched a suggestive eyebrow at him. “I’ll take her back to Michelle--she’s asking where you stole off to with her baby.”

Jack followed him back to the meeting hall, no longer as empty as it once was, set up with cots for their people, little curtained-off “rooms” to feign privacy. But right now it was just the two of them, sitting at the piano. David began playing, and Jack tried to follow along, a little slow at first but they found a rhythm eventually. David was so good he could turn pages and not even lose his place. Jack kept his eyes on the sheet music, not watching David’s hands glide across the keyboard as he wished to. These were the hands that gave him so much pleasure at night, that touched him with a reverence and kindness he still didn’t believe he deserved.

David stopped and Jack waited. “Your hands are so beautiful,” David said. “It’s funny, I have these rough, clumsy hands, not the hands of a pianist. Or a prince.” Jack smiled. “And yet I always felt so at home with the instrument.”

Jack turned to look at him. His heart felt full, almost too full. “I had everything in life, or nearly so. But I suppose no one really has everything. I thought I’d eventually get what I loved most, that it would come part and parcel with a crown, but when I realized it never would, it killed me. Only now do I realize I have what I love most.”

David leaned forward and kissed him. 

“There will be rumors, once we’re back in Gilboa.” Jack picked up the notes again. “I’m not going to lie about what I am anymore.”

“I know. Have you ever known me to care what others think?” David put his hands on the keys but didn’t play. “And it won’t be illegal, anyway, if I have my will. You won’t have to hide that part of yourself again.” His vehemence made Jack smile.

“Court will be very interesting. So will the press.” He wanted to erase his old name and take a new one: David’s. Jonathan who belongs to David, brother of Michelle.

“Let them say what they want. I won’t control those things anymore, I won’t be like your father,” David said.

“It’s not a complaint. I like interesting.” Jack took David’s hand and moved it on the keys, until David picked up the melody again and they played. “This is a covenant I’ll never break,” Jack said. “I’m yours for as long as you wish it.” He didn’t say what he’d do on the day David no longer wished it, but those what-ifs worried him less and less. From the far end of the hall, Michelle was listening to them play, holding Julia and saying something into her ear as she pointed at David and Jack.

He hoped Ephram was listening, too. “We are none of us alone on God’s earth,” Ephram had said in his letter, “and you’ve been left too long to think that you were. Let Him show you that you’re not.” There were still so many things in that letter Jack had yet to comprehend.

But he was learning.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a variation on a line from London Grammar's "Stay Awake."
> 
> Many, many thanks to Destina for wrestling with this thing in beta.


End file.
